World Server's Spread - Feb-March, 2007

By Christine Payne-Towler
February 2007 - Tarot Arkletters
For an introduction to the World Servers' Spread see ArkLetter 5

Make it all new!  This is the motive and the method for this time of the year. All the old, outworn forms are being recycled, dismantled, melted down and recombined. It's an alchemical free-for-all, and nothing will go untouched. 

General advice for times like this is -- surrender everything that holds you to your old identity. Be willing to watch your known self morph and mutate into its own future. Render yourself into your own raw ingredients and then re-decide how to combine them freshly.  There's never going to be a better time to get that addressed than this month, between the late Aquarius NewMoon and the late Pisces NewMoon (which falls only a few days before Spring Equinox).

In support of this coming month, and to help us all take the blinders off our inner eyes and see ourselves freshly, I'm pulling these cards from my new and very beautiful Golden Tarot of Klimt.  I'm not making any claims for these cards as they are too new to me for me to even have formed an attitude about them, but that seems somehow right for this spread. 

A friend asked me a few days ago whether I think a brand-new deck even "knows how to read" right out of the box, and I laughed.  In truth, I think of the cards as behaving like iron filings, whereas I am the magnet. As soon as I pick up the deck, they are all pointing in my direction! I don't think this is just a peculiarity of mine, though of course I'm more sensitized to this reality than most. If I get a new deck, I'm excited to have a conversation with it very soon if I can. My main concern is to give it a lot of deep shuffles at the outset, before any cards are pulled or questions are asked. The initial shuffling moves the deck out of bandbox order and begins the process of attuning the cards to their user.  I recommend 15 minutes of meditation while shuffling, or 50 shuffles counted out, before using a deck right out of the box.

World position:  6 Wands

The LWB for this deck (that's shorthand for "little white book", the tiny folio that always comes in the box with a new set of cards) says that the suit of Wands "represents learning and experience, therefore ingenuity and intellectual application."  Keywords for this Six are "Victorious confrontation, defeated rivals, rewarded efforts."

This little entry already tells us a lot about this deck as well as the interpreter's approach to giving meaning to the cards. The person writing the card interpretations is Bepi Vigna (as one would expect, Klimt never really thought of making a Tarot deck), so we will assume that it's Vigna who chose these keywords. From an overview of the pip card meanings as a whole, we see that this pack generally follows the European divinatory tradition codified by Etteilla, the standard pattern governing the pip cards of almost all of the European decks. However, Vigna has chosen to spin this card a few steps away from its historical center, to make it more applicable to the modern mind-set. I too have adjusted my reading of this card to a more modern sensibility. This makes me suspect that this interpreter has psychological savvy informing his or her awareness of the historical conventions, and is responding to the 20th century's adaptations of the pips.

One of the historical keywords for this card is "servants", in the sense of having plenty of helpers and underlings to boss around. Modern interpreters might feel this concept needs updating, because issues with one's servants aren't as prominent as they used to be in daily life (unless you count service companies like the phone, electricity, water, the bank, etc.). Traditionally, there is also an implication in this card that the work crew in question is considered "lower class" or underlings, unworthy of respect or the extension of equality. In old-fashioned family patterns, we often see the family members arranged like servants under an all-powerful leader, traditionally the patriarch. The wife-and-kids unit was property of the husband/father; legally speaking, they were his chattels. In this sense this card can represent the "pecking order", and also the "crap flows downhill" principle.

On the positive side, pulling the family circle together for projects or meals is still a regular occasion for most people, so the classic association of "domesticity" for this card still stands up to scrutiny. Think spring-cleaning, fence mending or painting the house. One's home is one's castle, and everybody needs to pitch in to keep it healthy and orderly.   One can also think about those people who work in family businesses (or businesses that feel like a family), where work and play and duty and pleasure are all connected with the group being OK.  The collective wellbeing depends upon each member holding up their unique part, and everybody agrees to honor these rules coming in.

But where is Vigna getting this sense of victory from, the feeling of a contest, of striving towards a reward?  Here's what I think -- If we view the "servants" in question as helpers, allies and teammates, then one can see how the cards could be emphasizing that having a cohesive and mutually-attuned crew can make short shrift of even big jobs.  Our modern society values egalitarianism, so the emphasis on higher/lower class relations may ring hollow in many people's sensibilities. Nevertheless, everybody can relate to "team efforts" and the enthusiasm they generate, the energy and ingenuity they can arouse. If we also factor in the satisfaction of a big job well done, plus the fun and challenge of functioning interdependently, then it becomes easier to see where this interpretation comes from. 

One implication that has become stronger in the modern interpretations of this card (at least since the Waite deck) is the concept of leadership emerging in the individual as a result of experiencing rigorous projects taken on as a team. This card highlights what we are capable of when tasked by collective need. In older times the extended family would be the venue wherein we would get chances to discover how far we will stretch ourselves for the common good. But in modern times the setting could just as well be one's volunteer group, an educational circle or those old high school buddies you stayed in touch with. A good rule of thumb would be to say that the 6 of wands takes us out of ourselves, inspiring us to work towards a greater good than the strictly personal.

Boiling it all down, the position in the spread as well as the card itself, my feeling is that step number one in making everything new is to look beyond the self and embrace the larger family of life. We can keep the hierarchical tradition if it helps us take protective responsibility for those who cannot defend themselves. Or we can assume a horizontal stance and bear witness to the sentience, equality and living rights of creatures other than our own kind.  We can use this card to stimulate a greater awareness of the interlocking global ecology, and how causes at the top trickle down to demonstrate effects at the bottom. Or we can simply wake up and get busy taking care of the things we care about even more than we care about our own selfish comforts and pleasures.

Ultimately, if the card points us back to the particular thing that each of us can do to be of help with the general cause of "saving the world", and then it will have proved its worth. This card in this position makes a very clear statement to look up and out, to those lives being lived around us, and see what we can do to make their experience better, or at least not so bad. Let us serve before we expect to be served. Let us be strong towards the cause of those who are not. Let us recognize fellow feeling with the other sentient entities on this planet, and extend ourselves a bit beyond our own self-interest, so we can contribute something of ourselves to the commonweal.

Fool position:  Horse of cups

The LWB says:  "Search, mysticism, seduction, falling in love". What they don't say is, this is the Grail Knight; Lancelot, Percival and all the spiritual heroes of the Middle Ages quest stories.  This card is also associated with the parable of the prodigal son, who took his inheritance out of his family and went astray, only to come back later in life penniless but repentant. The joy of a parent in the child who makes a success of himself is great, but the joy of a parent whose child was lost, castaway, and dead to his family, when finally the child returns, older and wiser -- well, that joy is immeasurable. This card is a parable of redemption.

The theme of mysticism right next to seduction and love implies the discipline of Eros Magic, the spiritual cultivation of longing and imagination, which so occupied Europe's educated classes in the wake of the Crusades. In the cup is the figurative heart of the Knight, who is often designated as a poet, mystic and troubadour.  His chalice contains and embodies his Ideal, that vision of beauty, truth and holiness which first pulled him away from his known world, to brave the unknown for its sake. This ever-pregnant Holy Grail leads the Knight into all of his adventures, then out of them again. No human being can fully embody this Ideal, though the Knight might vest it upon a person from time to time temporarily.  In fact, the Knight exists to serve the Grail; hearts-home is wherever the Grail is. Taking refuge in the Grail, the Knight heals and restores himself from all of the frustrations, disappointments and compromises that incarnation forces his soul to endure. Somehow, the presence of the Ideal makes up to him for all the instances of its absence in the Real.

Some say the Knight of Cups is in love with Love, but in the context of this mysticism of the Ideal, this might not be such a bad thing. People who are in love will do amazing, miraculous things.  People who are inspired by an ideal, however invisible to others, have accomplished the unthinkable. People in love with an ideal are single minded, relentless, fearless.  Hence this Knight can be an invincible foe -- you can kill him, but you cannot stop him!  He will reincarnate over and over to continue his Quest, seeking his Ideal with heart extended, feeling his way along.

How can we relate this Knight to the Fool position?  Simply speaking, become nakedly honest with yourself about what you love most dearly and truly in the entire world. Then admit it to God and at least one other person that this is true. Become known to yourself as a Knight of your own Holy Grail.  Realize the Quest that you are on, that you have been on since the beginning, and get out of denial about it. Love what you love and be shameless about it. Then you can do what comes naturally, be authentic and spontaneous, and leave behind the kind of soul-killing subterfuges people get into when they are pretending to be something that they are not. This will help you say yes to the things that are good for you, and no to the things that deplete you and lead you astray from your Path.

Magus position, Queen of Chalices reversed

Here is the place where we are challenged to materialize our goals and shoot for particular outcomes in matter, time and space. In this position we are being given straightforward advice about what to do, what actions to take. As the pulse of the spread descends from the eternal (World position), through the astral (Fool position), to the material plane of our daily lives, the Magus position represents the exact location of the effects, of which the previous two cards are the causes.  Here we will take our instructions "to the mat" so to speak, and wrestle with real-world situations using our best skills cultivated through meditation on past experience. The title Magus also should serve to remind us that it is in the realm of the imagination that our strongest skills for this work can be found. This position reminds us that modifying the way we look at our problems can give us the “fix” for most of them.

The LWB of the Golden Klimt Tarot says of this Queen:  "Generosity, comfort of a woman, new offspring, charm, ability to listen. [reversed] Dishonor, ambiguous relationships, letdowns by close relatives, incommunicability." This Queen is traditionally seen as ultra-feminine, with all the attractive, nurturing and delicious qualities that implies, plus all the impractical, emotional and irrational ones as well. She is like a bed of kelp moving with the tides, taking the shape of the current around her. At high tide she is exquisitely beautiful, dancing and flowing freely in the deep waters. But at low tide she is a flattened mass of helpless tendrils, waiting out her period of vulnerability until the next tide comes in to release her beauty again.

When I read cards, the main attribute I emphasize with the Queen of Cups is her great psychic ability. This Queen is the most intuitive, sensitive, receptive, responsive Royal in the deck. She lives to feel, and she handles all of her life through her subtle antennae. Without need of speech or logic, she can instantly sense the state of everybody around her, whether she wants to or not. Her greatest strength is also her greatest weakness -- compulsive empathy eventually wears its possessor out from too-much-information syndrome. Any Queen of Cups who wants to live long and prosper will learn when and how to open and close her pores at will. 

In this position, the message seems to be that sensitivity is of the essence right now. We might have been raised in an emotion-denying culture with an over-emphasis on rational thinking, but that does not mean that we have to remain scarred by this lopsided method of perception all of our lives. There is something about this time that is asking us to take off our shields, pull down our veils and make ourselves available to the full spectrum of our feelings, hunches, sensations and intimations. We knew how to do this before we had language, and we can learn it again today if we want to. But we have to move our center of attention down out of our heads to do it.  We have to learn to lead with our hearts and with our feelings again.  There might also be a hint about becoming more aware of our own personal cycles, such as the effect of the lunar tides upon our birthcharts. Effort spent decoding your personal cycles should be rewarding this month.

Here's my review of this spread: 
    1) It's not about you, but about the global village, the planet, the communion of souls. Imagine what you can contribute from your center.
    2) Drop your conditioning and become passionate about what you love. Accept whatever consequences follow from that.
    3) Put down the defensive and insulating behaviors and consent to feel yourself, your true feelings, about everything.

We have an amazing and powerful opportunity in this next month to prune away the confining overgrowth from the past and liberate the future to unfold without trammel. This might mean some diminishment of our self-gratification habits, but perhaps that would be a useful exercise towards increasing our liberty to roll with the punches. If we are not so all-fired busy defending and entrenching our habits, we might actually have a new experience, an experience that isn't simply a repeat of the past. If that should happen, we want to be in the mode to respond authentically and follow wherever the possibilities lead. Therefore it is advantageous to remain open, unguarded, and neutral, even if there's some risk involved with taking that posture. The risk of missing the subtle signal being sent via the inner senses is considerably more devastating than the risk of being judged by your peers as a fool.

Now here's my review of these cards, the Golden Tarot of Klimt: Like many of the decks made "in the style of" a well-known artist, this is an homage rather than a planned and intentional deck. It is visually stunning due to the gilding and the colors, and there are a number of beautiful nudes, though we appear to be in a world where only a few people get enough to eat. Multiple children, pregnant women and strong virile men make a contrast to the equally numerous images of bodies in various stages of decline. There are a few too many anorexic and emaciated naked bodies strewn about for my taste, giving an overall decadent impression of creeping sickness amidst great beauty. The many stony-faced ladies are a bit forbidding, if mysterious. The author of the LWB has a good comprehension of both historical tradition and its modern adaptations, but the notes per card are very short. One great feature is its coherence with European conventions, which means you can bring your copy of Mary Greer's Tarot Reversals to your reading and probably have a deeper understanding of your cards than you will with the LWB alone.   

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The TAROT ARKLETTERS are published by:

Christine Payne-Towler
Research: Esoteric Tarot, Literature and Practice; Tarot.com
Publisher, The Tarot Arkletters
Bishop, Gnostic Church of St. Mary Magdalene
Founder: Tarot University;
Author: The Underground Stream;

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